Modification of porous waste-sugarcane-bagasse-based carbon aerogel electrode for MCDI desalination

The utilization of waste sugarcane bagasse in order to reduce landfill residue and CO2 emission is very crucial. In this research, we present a low-cost and easily accessible approach to fabricating cellulose aerogel from waste sugarcane bagasse using a NaOH/Urea/H2O gelation solution with different amounts of urea as cross-linking agent. The resulting cellulose aerogels were carbonized and activated to produce activated cellulose carbon aerogel (SB-ACCA). Among the samples, the material with a cellulose:urea ratio of 1:1, designated as SB-ACCA-1.0, exhibited outstanding properties, including the highest BET surface area of 642.3 m2 g-1 together with a high specific capacitance of 96.5 F g-1. These properties both contribute to its significant salt adsorption capacity of 19.49 mg g-1 at 1.2 V, which could be further enhanced to 23.91 mg g-1 at 1.4 V. These results reveal a viable pathway for utilizing waste sugarcane bagasse and numerous types of agricultural wastes to develop cellulose carbon aerogel electrodes for capacitive deionization in the desalination of salt water, as well as other advanced materials for different environmental applications.